Welcome

Welcome to the POZ/AIDSmeds Community Forums, a round-the-clock discussion area for people with HIV/AIDS, their friends/family/caregivers, and
others concerned about HIV/AIDS. Click on the links below to browse our various forums; scroll down for a glance at the most recent posts; or join in the
conversation yourself by registering on the left side of this page.

Privacy Warning: Please realize that these forums are open to all, and are fully searchable via Google and other search engines. If you are HIV positive
and disclose this in our forums, then it is almost the same thing as telling the whole world (or at least the World Wide Web). If this concerns you, then do not use a
username or avatar that are self-identifying in any way. We do not allow the deletion of anything you post in these forums, so think before you post.

The information shared in these forums, by moderators and members, is designed to complement, not replace, the relationship between an individual and his/her own
physician.

All members of these forums are, by default, not considered to be licensed medical providers. If otherwise, users must clearly define themselves as such.

Forums members must behave at all times with respect and honesty. Posting guidelines, including time-out and banning policies, have been established by the moderators
of these forums. Click here for “Am I Infected?” posting guidelines. Click here for posting guidelines pertaining to all other POZ/AIDSmeds community forums.

We ask all forums members to provide references for health/medical/scientific information they provide, when it is not a personal experience being discussed. Please
provide hyperlinks with full URLs or full citations of published works not available via the Internet. Additionally, all forums members must post information which are
true and correct to their knowledge.

Author
Topic: Please help our research on the use of online health forums (Read 1443 times)

My name is Hanmei. I am a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia and currently working on a project investigating the use of online health forums. The aim of the study is to verify whether the use of online health forums differs among people with different medical conditions. Drawn from the literature and findings from our previous research, we hypothesise that patients with minor and non-chronic illnesses are more likely to engage in an information-centred strategy while patients with severe and chronic illnesses are more likely to engage in a people-centred strategy. If the hypothesis is supported, the finding from this study can potentially advise the management of online health forums to strategically direct their resource to render more targeting service, based on different types of medical conditions. That is why we need people from a wide range of medical background and HIV/AIDS is one type of conditions that we are looking for.

We are very interested in learning about your opinions and experience. We would like to invite voluntary participants:

- who are patients or care givers,

- have visited POZ forum in the past 7 days,

to complete a 30-minute online survey. Participants will be asked about their perception of the message and the person that they have the best memory of during their most recent visit to the forum(s). All participants who complete the survey will have a chance to win one out of four $50 gift cards of their choice, as our way to say thank you.

Thank you to whoever that took time reading and participating in the study. We still need a couple of participants to complete the survey. If you just read the message and you're interested, please help us by visiting http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ohforum. I really appreciate your help and support! If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to let me know.

I came back to update the outcome of the research I conducted last November. I finally finished the study and a study summary can be downloaded at http://hanmeifan.com/index.php?page=research_studies. If you have any feedback or comment, please feel free to contact me or leave your thought at the commenting area on the website. If you are interested in my research, please stay tune and check out my future studies later. Thank you very much for your generous support!

p.s. For participants who requested a copy of the result, I will email a copy to you very shortly.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts